The Problem:
Justia, Westlaw, Lexis Nexis, and others all have ridiculously high monthly costs for law firm websites. Law firms pay too much for their sites.
The Business
Migrating law firm websites from popular law firm website providers to cheap hosting.
The math works well for a relatively small scale business. Companies like Justia, Findlaw (Westlaw), and Lexis Nexis charge a few thousand or less for up-front for websites. They make their money on the backend by charging monthly fees on the order of $300-1000 depending on features.
Take Justia, for example. If customers cancel within a year, there are charges. However, if the customer waits one year, they can take a copy of their site at no cost. Therefore, instantly, you could save the average customer hundreds of dollars per month. Justia’s highest margins are from raking in half a grand a month doing virtually nothing. They count on customers to renew.
There are quite a few skills needed for success in this endeavor.
You need to be good enough at SEO to not hurt the customer during a migration. You need to be good enough at WordPress to give the customer a fully functional CMS. You need to be good enough at design to make sure the CMS switch doesn’t break sites or their design. And, most difficult, you need to be a good teacher. You need to explain to the customer how they are overpaying, and why it will only help them to make the switch.
I think a good price point is 4-6 months worth of savings. That’s about $2500, give or take. For the right small team, if you had the customers, you could do 1-5 migrations per day.
It’s not huge money, but it’s…
Doableness
Very doable! This could be up and running virtually instantly with the right skills. Prospects are relatively easy to find.
My Thoughts
One of the only legitimate roadblocks these big legal website industry players would put up relates to their directories. Each one runs a directory. For some prospects, they might be right to not want to make the switch. It depends on where their cases are coming from! That’s a crucial point to remind the prospect!